A 'T', I don't believe this, A Godforsaken friggin' 'T'. Here I sit,
hunched over a hot monitor, straining every neuron, focusing every
insight, directing every fiber of my existence toward the goal of
producing one of the finest essays I am capable of writing, and what
is the result? A friggin' T! There it was, you saw it, right in the
middle of the last paragraph of my article
"Why I will not Vote!" It
practically leapt off the screen at me, A bloody T. It was supposed to
be an "I", but you probably figured that out. I am thoroughly
disgusted. I use the spell checker, I use the grammar checker, I read
the damned article, and I end up with a T. Someday's it just doesn't
pay to get out of bed.

I would like to formally blame every English teacher I ever had. Yes,
that's right, you know who you are, you remember me. I was the dopy
looking kid with the flattop, sitting in the back of the class chewing
the covers off the textbook. I was the one in the puddle of sleep-drool
you had to shake awake at the end of class. You know me, oh evil
ones! I was the kid you robbed by sitting at your desk and failing to
educate me! No, don't tell me I should have paid attention. How dare
you try to shirk the responsibility for your dereliction. It's all
your fault for not beating me over the head with an English primer
until the knowledge seeped in by osmosis.

How could I be responsible for this travesty? How could anyone seek to
blame me for this monumental failure of the public educational system?
Not to mention the parochial schools of the Detroit Archdiocese. I
showed up didn't I? I sat in class everyday being lulled to sleep by
your endless droning. "I before E, except after ..." something or
other. "Never end a sentence with a proposition." "Is there something
you want to share with the rest of the class, Mr. Martin?" Shame,
shame on you.

I cannot lay all of the blame on you however, Bill Gates must take his
share as well! How dare you make billions selling your defective
products sir? You are responsible for much of my hideous embarrassment
in the pages of this e-zine. It was your software that refused to
correct my most basic errors. How dare you publish a writing program
that does not recognize that one trillion is a 1,000,000 million, and
not 1000 million? Or that wether is a castrated male sheep and that
the word I wanted was whether. Who the hell would want to refer to a
castrated sheep anyway? What kind of perverts do you have working for
you, to include that word in the spell checker? How dare you sell me a
product that would cause me to believe that I could be a writer. What
kind of Demonic impulse would cause you to sell this instrument of
social ignominy? You should be forced to pay me an inordinate amount
of money for your failure to warn me that this product would not make
up for the failure of my teachers, and I intend to find a shyster ...
I mean a lawyer, who will do just that!

Of course other actors have been involved in this tragedy as well. The
government, for not paying teachers enough money to motivate them. My
parents, for not showing me enough love to overcome my resistance to
being educated. Society, for not ... Well, I don't know what society
didn't do, but they always fail to do something, or they do something,
or ... whatever. John Taylor, in his selfish refusal to stop living
his own life in order to ensure that I won't be embarrassed, must
shoulder part of this burden as well. Lastly, L. Neil Smith, for
starting this whole thing ... wait a minute, he might not let me write
anymore ... scratch that, Mr. Smith didn't do anything, he is
completely blameless, no doubt a hapless victim like myself!

You see. It's a vast conspiracy! No doubt the action of some cabal of
the pinko-Jewish-banker-commie-Masons and their ilk (I really hate
Ilk). Well, I just hope you can now understand that this whole, I
don't know English thing, is in no way my fault, and that whenever you
see an error crop up in my work you will put the blame squarely where
it belongs, somewhere else.